Thursday, December 15, 2011

I had wanted to write a follow-up to my previous post, but I'm so slammed with work that it's just not going to happen- except briefly.

To sum up the rest of the trip, I thought Curitiba was awesome. It was a nifty blend of elements from back home, things I saw in Europe, and at times I even felt I was wandering around the UMass campus as I did when I was a teenager. I also flashed back to my backpacking days with my time in the hostel and also wandering around the city. The Oscar Niemeyer museum is awesome. Lots of parks and green areas that are clean and don't smell like other people's feces. I think it would be a more pleasant place for me to live than Salvador. However, the women are much cuter here in Bahia, in my humble opinion.

Here's something I wrote while still at the hostel:

This hostel is strange, and I'll tell you why.

I managed to escape the dorm, thank goodness, and got myself a 'simple room,' which I figured would be a closet with a bed where I at least wouldn't have to deal with snoring and lights on in the middle of the night. I bought a pair of earplugs yesterday on a hunch and it was the best investment I ever made. I could hear Drunk Dude snoring even with the plugs in, but at least it didn't keep me up. However, Upper Bunk Guy woke me up every time he turned over, making the steel bunk bed rock like a tree in a typhoon.

I made sure I was up before check-out and requested a simple room, which is what I had wanted in the first place when I checked in. Luckily I got one. When I opened the door however, I figured there must have been a mistake. There were three beds in the room, and no lockers for my bags, so I figured I really didn't want a simple room after all if I had to share it with two strangers and no way to lock up my stuff.

My confusion arose from the fact that at this hostel the dorm bed and the simple room are the same price. Doesn't that seem odd? I thought so. When I saw the three beds I figured that explained it - you pay the same because it's still kind of a dormitory. But no - they told me that I would have the room, with all three beds, all to myself. Now that's very odd. Wouldn't it make sense to charge just a wee bit more for a private room? I know I'd pay it. Not only that, but my room overlooks the little park in the front of the building, which is nice. A bit of road noise, but I've still got the earplugs.

So I looked at a globe and Curitiba is just south of the Tropic of Capricorn, which means I have just sneaked out of the tropics. It is indeed almost at the same latitude as Brisbane, and Miami is in a pretty similar location in the Northern hemisphere. And let me tell you - I am not in Salvador anymore. Still definitely Brazil, but soooo different.

Finally, I just discovered the finished video of the graffiti event I went down there for. I appear toward the end, and even got time-lapsed for a little bit, which I hadn't realized.